The
Coprolite Industry

Introduction

Cambridgeshire was also
a place of industry, based on farming needs; its oddest industry was coprolite-digging,
the extraction of phosphatised clay nodules for fertiliser. Coprolites occurred
in a belt from Soham to Barrington and were exhausted in a rush between 1850
and 1890. It was an industry unique in England. Nodules were excavated in trenches,
yielding 300 tons an acre.

The Discovery
of Coprolite in Cambridgeshire

Why did coprolite production
start at this particular time? There are two important factors to consider;
partly the increase of geological knowledge and above all the accidental discovery
of the mineral by someone who was certainly no geologist. A miller named John
Ball, of Burwell, owned land just outside the town, on the Fenland edge. How
exactly he came across the coprolites will never be known. He may have discovered
that his turnips were growing with extraordinary liveliness and dug the earth
up to see what was underneath. But what is certain is that in 1851 he discovered
the hard rounded fossils which, at that spot, would only have been a few feet
below ground, in the Greensand. He dug out a quantity and according to Lucas
(1931), a fenland doctor who had heard the story by word of mouth, washed the
clay off them and ground them to a powder in his windmill. He then treated the
powder with an acid to make a fertiliser. This process was probably similar
to that used for processing bones and dried blood for manure and this explains
his seemingly broad scientific knowledge.

Apart from Ball's activities,
there is very little evidence of anyone mining coprolite until the end of the
1850's. There are two main reasons for this. Firstly, in such a widespread and
traditional industry as agriculture, practices always take a long time to catch
a hold; in the same way, crop rotation spread extremely slowly. Ball probably
found sales difficult enough, even though he was the only producer in the field.
Added to the difficulties of opening a market, there were transportation problems;
the railway network was still limited and river tolls still high. The second
important factor was the public's lack of accurate geological knowledge that
was so important with thin seams of mineral. Even university geologists had
little experience in the complexities of the Gault and Chalk Marl, let alone
the average landowner or tenant farmer. It seems that, up to 1860, most coprolite
was only discovered accidentally.

The Growth
of the Industry

The first recorded discovery
of a coprolite bed after 1851 was at Cambridge in 1858 on Coldham's Common,
probably where a pit was being dug for brickmaking. Practically all pits to
the south were opened in the years 1858-70 and until 1872 there were no pits
to the north of Cambridge except at Swaffham and Burwell. This is not to say
that production was always higher in the former group; in fact, the converse
is true. There are a number of possible reasons for this distinction. The first
is a severely practical one; there was no bridge between Cambridge and Ely across
the River Cam until one was built at Clayhithe in 1872, so that contact could
be made with the railway at Waterbeach. Until then only sites adjacent to navigations
were worked. There may also have been a great prejudice against disturbing the
peat soil, the best in the world, until it was realised that bringing up the
undersoil was beneficial. The balance between profits from normal agricultural
activity and the costs of transporting the bulky coprolite must surely have
been an important factor in production here.

The Coprolite
Mining Rush

By 1880 almost every landowner
along the relevant geological outcrop, roughly on a line drawn from Soham to
Royston, must have been involved directly or indirectly with coprolite extraction.
As early as 1863 the effect of expansion was being felt on transport; mostly
of coprolites being taken to the factory. There was an early conflict between
rail and road interests becuase the turnpike was not getting its share of the
profits from the already large amount of coprolite traffic originating from
workings and factories in the Abington Pigotts and Clopton area. Initially,
at the small workings, the coprolite was loaded into a cart after being washed
and was taken by road to the manufacturer. By 1873 things had changed. The map
of workings at Clayhithe shows a large system of 'tramways,' perhaps as long
as 3 miles. An estate map of the same area in 1875 also includes tramways but
in almost all cases these have been removed completely or shifted to another
field. Clearly, as a mine was worked, the tramway was manhandled to a new position
and work could then have begun anew. The tramway was thus of a very temporary
nature needing flanged wheels for bullhead rail and which were difficult and
expensive to construct: the 'tramways' would have possibly been 'plateways'
made of simple 'L' shaped girders along which horses drew wooden-wheeled trucks.
At a minimum yield of 200 tons of nodules per acre 13-15,000 tons of coprolite
had to be shifted. But no bridge existed across the Cam to reach the railway
from the eastern fenland until 1872 and the old fenland lodes were at first
in too bad a state to take large industrial lighters. This lack of facilities
and the realization of the profits that farmers were making in the south of
the county prompted the rebuilding of equipment in the north. The Bridge across
the Cam at Clayhithe was built in 1872 a wharf also existed. From here the mineral
was taken in barges to Cambridge, Ely or Kings Lynn for subsequent distribution
by sea.

Further north in the Fens,
a long way from the railway, at Upware, Wicken and Reach, river transport was
always the only way of distributing coprolite, road transport being far too
expensive and unreliable. Here, rather than companies searching for transport
facilities for their particular working, they would pick an area of greensand
through which a navigation ran. In three cases this was already available; at
Bottisham, Reach and Burwell Lodes. At other places the extreme slowness of
river transport made it inevitable that the railways should eventually become
the biggest carrier. Tolls were no more expensive by train, either. Added to
this, the Great Eastern Railway had lost most of through coal traffic to the
East Coast Great Northern main line, and was very eager to make up for it.

As prices show phosphate
was the cheapest form of fertiliser apart from animal manure, but the proportion
of farmers that used it is not known. The phosphate would arrive, not bagged,
but loose in a cart. Modes of applying the fertiliser varied. The powder might
be mixed loose with animal manure and distributed by hand from a cart on the
fields in the traditional way. Used by itself, however, the phosphate marked
a definite improvement in agricultural practice. One part of phosphate was mixed
with six parts of water and placed in a fertiliser drill. The drill differed
from a seed-sowing apparatus. The was used for most of the 'root' vegetables
such as turnips, mangolds, swedes and sugar beet. The fall in the production
of coprolite was by no means as sudden or confident as the rush had been in
the early 1870's.

The Fall
of the Industry

The factors governing the
decline are more far-reaching geographically and less obvious than the expansion.
One complication is that a primary lull started in 1878. An increase then followed,
reaching its climax in 1885, from which year the permanent decline can be dated.
The reasons for the first lull was due to extensive imports from abroad, especially
from America. The Americans had discovered phosphate deposits in the states
of New York and New Jersey; by 1880 the American market was saturated and they
possibilities of the British market were now open to them. This and the decline
of the seams in Cambridgeshire led to a decline in the industry. By 1900 there
were virtually no mines left.